


Left to tread water in the middle of a desert

by jade-1459 (Jade)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Implied Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade/pseuds/jade-1459
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The walls bled black ink. Every where he looked bled black ink. (Warning: Implied Character Death)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left to tread water in the middle of a desert

The door crashed into the silent room and Lorne and his team went stumbling after it, guns drawn.

It took a moment for Lorne to get his bearings. To realize that there were no threats in the room. Nothing was going to stop their entry now that they were in and there was nothing and no one holding a gun or other kind of weapon on them. But that didn't stop the small hairs on the back of his neck from standing on end.

Glancing about the room, Lorne slowly lowered his weapon as he was assaulted by what he saw.

The walls bled black ink. Every where he looked bled black ink. The white boards were covered in equations, the walls, the floors, even the ceiling had been unitized in some areas. Off against one wall were what might have once been the walls of public bathroom stalls. There were stacks of papers and note books on the floor and on the tables. Loose leaf sheets taped, glued, and stickied to various surfaces.

Lorne had no idea where to being. No idea what the hell it was he was seeing.

Except that Rodney McKay was perched on a stool behind a table with a tiny Ancient artefact that took up less room than a credit card did in his wallet.

"Hey, doc," Lorne greeted the other man. He was careful to keep his voice low and soothing. It was the same tone he'd once used when making first introductions with a particularly mistrustful native Pegasus population. It sounded a little rough with disuse.

McKay glanced up then, as though just realizing that he was no longer alone in the room. Lorne wanted to retreat a step when those blue eyes finally landed on him. There was something dead looking out of the scientist's eyes.

"Did you know," Rodney asked, "that the entire universe can be summed up into a single equation?"

He looked back to the Ancient device before continuing without waiting for an answer. "Everything from the beautiful to the ugly, from the perfection to the flaws, the creative and destructive powers - everything, into a single equation. That equation will tell you everything," McKay breathed. "Absolutely everything. From the moment of creation, right up until those last gasping breaths."

"What did the equation show you while you worked it out, doc?" Lorne asked, sliding closer even against his misgivings.

"It's not like seeing the future, Major," McKay snapped, his fist connecting solidly with the table top. And there was fire back in those dead blue eyes. Made Lorne's skin crawl to see it, enough so that he didn't correct McKay about his title and recent promotion. "This isn't a crystal ball in some wannabe psychics tent. The equation sums up the universe - _my_ entire universe. From the moment we established the first stable wormhole with Atlantis" - McKay shouted, gesturing towards the white boards on the other side of the room - "right through every single day we were there" - this time he swept his arm about the room, indicating the walls and the floor, ceiling, and the bathroom stalls - "right up until he spat out his last bloodied breath and she blew apart!"

Lorne took another good look around the room again. Because he had an idea now of just what he was seeing. He just couldn't find the words to describe it though. Madness and insanity were both too light a term, and completely wrong. Obsession didn't even get close. This was McKay's life's work. His life expressed in a mathematical equation that Lorne could never even hope to one day understand.

He could hear the others just outside the room, murmuring softly to one another. Felt the instant one of them entered the room behind him. But he didn't look back, never took his eyes off McKay. Lorne didn't need his eyes to tell him Zelenka had crossed the threshold into the room and was beginning to poke at the papers and the walls. Humming and muttering softly under his breath. Lorne had made sure that the only people on the other side of that door were the Atlantian survivors, the refugees who'd managed to escape destruction.

"I can make things right," McKay hissed into the broken silence.

"What are you going to make right, doc?" Lorne inquired, edging a little closer to McKay now. He could clearly see the device on the table now. It was hooked up to a series of wires running off the side of the table to attach to something Lorne couldn't see underneath.

"Everything," was the answer Lorne got. "Don't you feel how wrong this all is? Doesn't it feel like we aren't meant to be here? Like something got screwed up along the way and we ended up upside down on the other side? I can go back and fix that. I can save him, save her, save all of them that didn't come back." McKay was back to staring at the device in front of him again. He was gently tapping at its surface, making ripples appear where he pressed down.

Lorne felt the shiver travel through his body. Because McKay was serious. He honestly believed that he could go back and change what had gone wrong. Fix all the mistakes that had led to them being stranded in the wastelands of their birth planet, drowning in the sea of wrongness. And if it had been anyone else standing there telling him this Lorne would have pumped them full of tranquilizers and never even blinked. But hearing McKay say he could do it... could do the impossible, made Lorne hesitate.

"Paradox," Lorne finally spoke into the sudden silence. The others had heard McKay, had heard what he'd said. They remembered that impossible wasn't a part of the Atlantian Scientist vocabulary. "If you go back in time and change events in the past then you'll prevent the very reasons you went back in time for in the first place."

McKay looked up at him as though he'd finally said something that was intelligent and worth listening to. Atlantis had been a harsh mistress, and her lessons had been left behind in form of scars if you were lucky enough to survive. Lorne had learned basic scientific principles out of self-preservation, even if he was more fluent in botany, physics and engineering had been near the top of his list. Right after field medicine.

"Multi-verse," McKay countered. "An infinite number of universes that have split off from our own based on the choices we make. When I go back, I'll simply be creating a new version of that reality." The ripples continued to appear on the device at random every time McKay's fingers made contact. He seemed completely unaware that he was even touching the thing.

It made Lorne feel comfortable enough to step further into the room, just a single step. Zelenka sucked in a breath behind him. Lorne couldn't afford to take his attention from the scientist before him. "And what happens to you here? What happens when you go back, McKay?"

Lorne watched the other man shrug. "My consciousness will be sent back and integrated into my body in at that point in time."

"What about this body, in this time?" Lorne demanded, keeping his voice flat and only mildly curious. Even though inside he was terrified that he knew what the answer was going to be.

"What do you think happens to a body without someone to drive it, Major?"

Lorne shook his head. "You can't guarantee that this will work, Doc," he said edging forward another step. "That machine'll suck your mind right out of your body and you don't have any promises that it's going to end up where you want it to go."

"What do you think the equation was for?" McKay demanded, gesturing once more at his work. "Did you think I threw myself into this work just for shits and giggles? Do you think I would have dedicated the last seven years of my life to this research if I didn't honestly believe that it would work in the end?"

The ripples on the device no longer seemed so random any more. They were increasing in frequency, shifting colours, casting light. And Lorne sucked in a breath. Desperate, because he knew time was running out, Lorne hit below the belt, tried to sucker punch some sense into the other man. "There's no guarantee that even if you do make it back there, that you'll be able to save him, save her."

"Doesn't mean I'm not going to try," was the last thing McKay said before his body collapsed to the floor.


End file.
